Painting in Wenatchee

Last half of Last week I was on vacation and in Wenatchee for skiing and painting. Saturday afternoon when the temperature was not too low (lower 30s), I drove down on Malaga-Alco hwy along Columbia River. A little after I passed Alco Wenatchee plant I stopped my car and set up my easel on the south side of the road. I was attracted by the icy hills and sagebrush on the bottom. I spent about 2 hours to paint this. I could have spent more time but the temperature started dropping and oil paint was becoming stiffer. So I gave up. Even though I didn't spend much time to create proper colors for sagebrush, I think I somewhat captured the coldness of the hills.

In-class Umbrella Painting

As I promised, today I took a photo of the outcome from the last class at Pratt. In this smaller format, this looks much better than the real painting. The key was two back-lit umbrellas. Since I tried following the condition not mixing those 12x4 colors except with white, the darkest colors were green, ultramarine blue and purples. By keeping the local colors and not to go far away, entire painting became very light as you can see easily. Also due to my set of primary colors which are transparent, the painting looks transparent as well.
I stopped painting this in about 3.5 hours. No break. So, I was tired at the end. But the outcome wasn't too bad to me. By the way the canvas size was 22"x26".

Color Making: putting to the test

Today was the day for the class. Two of us painted colorful umbrellas with our limited pallet. I don't have the photo for my outcome tonight because I left the wet canvas at the class room. I'll go there again Fri to take a photo if I don't forget.

Tonight I worked on the "East of the Mountains"again to make some progress. Also tried putting the color making way from the class to the test. Although the highland in the background became too pinkish, sagebrush got almost final colors. Next, I need to blur the mountains further and cover more underpaint with dried grass in the foreground.

Brush Strokes of Confidence

After working on background trees a while, I moved to the face of the horse. There is not much doubt for the shape of the head. I've learned about it by now. So my confidence is appearing on my brush strokes.

1st week at Color Boot Camp

Starting from today and continuing until March, I go to Pratt's Color Boot Camp taught by Jane Richlovsky every Wed afternoon. Today three of us worked on our own color circle; primary, secondary and tertiary colors. Then three tinted colors by adding titanium white to those twelve colors. Jane gave us freedom to pick our own primary colors within the ranges based on the nature of color pigments. I've chosen my current favorite set; ultramarine blue, hansa yellow, and arizarin crimson, which I most likely continue to use to create my palette for every oil painting. As I always have, I was having a problem mixing the twelve colors too little. Then I ended up mixing the same colors again and again when I expanded each mixed color to three more tinted ones. This process took us the entire afternoon.
Next week, we'll be painting still life only based on the colors we made without mixing them togather. I'm guessing now it would be similar to drawing with pastel. We'll see.

Green vs. Brown

Working on background trees. Since green is complementary to red (or light brown) the background makes the horse livelier. I put the first touch of mane on canvas. But it's still experimental. It's just to decide the edge with the background green. Even the values are not correct. At this moment, it's not so important.

Color changes based on distance

Gradually covering underpainting all over the canvas. Even thought the distant mountains have relatively closer values that I want them to be, the colors of far plateau are too clear, which doesn't provide depth or near-far contrast. I need to work on that soon.

Making Darker

After defining shadow parts, started working on the face of the horse. Still can't finalize the relative size of each feature of horse's face. It'll take a while.

Good Old Faithful

Even though I've been recently painting cows as animal subjects, horses are always one of my favorite subjects. The last one I did was back in Sep. 2005, "Golden Mane". It's been more than three years without painting any horses. But I finally came back to them. A friend of mine has been asking me painting a horse she and her husband own at their ranch-like home in IL. This would be a good practice before working on their horse. I'm thinking another horse painting after this, or later, for the coming-up Jun-Jul show.
I took some photos of this horse and others at a ranch just a couple miles east from Cle Elum along SH-10 that runs parallel to I-90 on the opposite side of Yakima River. I particularly liked this two color horse. The canvas size is 20"x24". I put underpainting with complementary colors. The title of this should be "breeze". You would understand why as soon as I painted her mane.